Game & Watch Multi Screen: Life Boat (1983).
Not just the precursor to the Game Boy—it also foreshadowed the Nintendo DS. That’s right: back in 1983, Nintendo was already experimenting with dual LCD screens.
The premise is simple but tense. Passengers leap from a burning ship, and you’ve got to catch them in lifeboats suspended by rope. Each boat only holds four survivors. After that, anyone else goes straight into shark country. To save them, you need to unload boats quickly and keep the flow moving.
Game A gives you two lifeboats to work with. Game B is cruel: just one lifeboat, and the pace ramps up until you’re practically sweating bullets.
It’s surprisingly solid—easily a cut above the cheap Tiger Electronics knockoffs that came later. Nintendo really were laying down the blueprint for handheld gaming.
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org @videogames@piefed.social Neat, those game&watch games were pretty good. I’ve got two here of which one’s also a dual screen. We played it a lot as kids.
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org @videogames@piefed.social
Oh by the way, https://itizso.itch.io/retrofabLifeboat is also on that site. I have Donkey Kong II. :)
